Back in April, when the ITC ordered Vizio to stop US imports of HDTVs that infringed on a patent held by Funai, President Obama was given 60 days to intervene. He didn't! Nor did he need to, it seems. »6/10/09 6:26am 6/10/09 6:26am

Back in April, Philips
announced plans »11/19/08 11:52am 11/19/08 11:52am to hand over its television promotion, sales and manufacturing to Funai. Now the company has expanded those plans to what sounds like all of their home theater products, including DVD players, Blu-ray players and surround sound equipment. Oh, you'll still see Philips DVD players…

HD Guru is reporting that Sony will drop the price of their
BDP-S350 »8/23/08 6:30pm 8/23/08 6:30pm Blu-ray player $100 and sell it for $300 beginning in September. As a result, manufacturer Funai plans to drop the price of its players (under the Philips/Magnavox, Insignia and Sylvania brands) down $50 to $250 in order to stay competitive in the…

Funai, whose subsidiaries are more familiar to us as Sylvania, Symphonic and Emerson, is planning on selling LCD HDTVs with Blu-rays on-board starting summer 2009. The company's previous successes in recent years with combo units (TVs with VCRs and TVs with DVDs) totaled up 40% and 20% of their sales in the US…
»8/13/08 3:20pm 8/13/08 3:20pm

Personally, I think that a "budget" Blu-ray player priced at $300 is not a true bargain, but given the prices of most of the majors out there it definitely falls into that category. The untested BD Profile 1.1 Magnavox (Funai) NB500 has been spotted on Wal-Mart shelves sporting 1080p/24 and 1080p/60 video output… »5/12/08 4:40pm 5/12/08 4:40pm

If the rampant out- and cross-sourcing between LCD and plasma TV makers didn't tell you that it's a nasty and brutish time in the TV biz, this should: Philips is officially pulling out of the US market, and is licensing its brand name for TVs over to Funai—best known for supplying Wal-Mart's Black Friday TVs and DVD… »4/08/08 12:42pm 4/08/08 12:42pm